


And the Night Keep Your Secrets

by grandilloquism



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-15
Updated: 2011-09-14
Packaged: 2017-10-23 18:22:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/253466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grandilloquism/pseuds/grandilloquism
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scenes from the life of Sirius Black, concentrating on his relationship with his mother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. And the Night Keep Your Secrets

**Author's Note:**

> Possibly it isn't clear here, but the wake they are at is for Regulus, and the oblique historical references are of Alexander the Great-- Hephaestion being his friend/lover and Bucephalus his horse.

“And is that your Patroclus, my son?” she asks, with a barely perceptible nod Remus’ way.

Sirius lifts his chin, always defiant, argumentative for its own sake, the fragile peace of this meeting has not soothed that from him, “He is my Hephaestion.”

She smiles at this, a thin knife of a smile that does not reach her eyes, “Always ambitious. Always contradictory.” She turns her head towards James now, at the edge of the crowd, “Does that make him your Bucephalus?”

He has to remind himself not to smile, that his mother’s cruel jokes have not been funny for nearly ten years now. She sees it though, in his eyes and the indecision of his mouth. Her smile this time is real, and he had forgotten how lovely she could be when she smiled, even now. Even with the grief etched in her posture and in the fine lines around her eyes she is beautiful, tragedy has not stolen that from her.

He deflects, fumbles in his jacket for his last cigarette and lights it with a cheap muggle lighter. A familiar line of displeasure pulls at her mouth and she watches the piece of lurid green plastic with her ice grey eyes as it disappears back into his pocket.

“Your father smoked,” she says, ignoring him now, searching the crowd. “I always liked the smell of it on him.” He doesn’t say that he likes the smell of it too, that when Remus is away for days on some bit of Order business he spends hours in their one grubby armchair smelling unlaundered shirts. He think she knows, though, when his jaw tightens and he looks down at their feet.

“May he and I share one thing, then,” he says and looks back up, holding the cigarette to his lips and taking a long drag. She is looking at him now, and she follows the motion and the trail of smoke as he exhales.

“Yes,” she agrees. “You have always been mine.” Her eyes catch some bit of motion beyond his shoulder and her face hardens, her eyes narrow. He turns to see Bellatrix arm in arm with her husband, talking with a large man in archaic robes. His mother's eyes catch his once more and there is fire in the ice of them, “Would you destroy cities for those you love, my would-be Alexander? Would you strike men down so that someone else might share in the grief you feel? My white knight?”

“I have not been yours for five years, Mother.”

Her eyes spark, “Whose then?” She nods once more towards Remus, “His? Your _eromenos_? Have you given him your heart?”

“I would give him my life.”

She gives a bark of laughter at this, a harsh bitter sound that has no place in this prettily gilded room. “Dying is easy, eager warrior.”

“Yes,” he says, answering all of her questions. “I would do anything for them.”

She takes a small step back, expression satisfied. She reaches down the neck of her robes and wraps her fingers around a small object; she tugs sharply and the chain it hangs on comes loose of her neck. She holds it out to him.

He needs but a glance at the small golden object to know what it is, he steps back, drops the half gone cigarette on the carpet. “No,” he says, the word a whisper.

She presses it into his empty hand, the warm ring and her cool fingers are a contrast on his palm. “I will not relinquish this family to a murderess who believes the ideals of a madman are more important than blood.”

“She knows,” Sirius guesses, a fleeting glace towards his cousin.

“Or she did it herself,” neither turn but the both of them watch Bellatrix as she makes a circle of the room. “The Kindly Ones serve a special fate for those who slay kin. I would burn this house to its foundations before I suffered it and its secrets to fall into her hands, or those of her greedy master.”

He takes the ring. An unnatural warmth spreads through him from his contact with it, surging up his arm and into his chest and rippling through his extremities. It fizzes and stretches until it fills him; a heavy cloaking of magic across his body.

His mother moves, so that her body hides the steady flickering pulse of magical aura that surrounds his hand. “Wear it,” she says. “Destroy it, bury it somewhere far from here, but see that it never falls to her.” She scoffs, “What irony-- that you will be the last of us.” She leans forward and he is swamped in memories of her mint and juniper perfume. She whispers, “Goodbye, my little warrior. May you solve all of your puzzles and conquer all of your enemies.”

And then, because even now, at twenty-one and after everything that has happened he still worships his mother, just a little bit. And because it is the impulse of every little boy to make their mothers smile, he says, “May the stars guide your passage and the night keep your secrets. May your wit never fail and your strength never falter. May your actions and your reasons remain, forever, toujours pur.”

She closes her eyes and bows her head, they stand there like that for a handful of seconds. “I will never forgive you,” she says finally. “For leaving us, for not preventing this.”

He steps back, temper flaring, ring still in hand. “You--”

She cuts him off, “You may hate me if you like. If it makes you feel better, you may call me every insulting thing you have ever learned. You may not do it here, though. You will not disrespect death in that way. You may find me later and we will trade hexes in the street, but you will leave this house today without raising your voice.”

He tucks the still warm ring into his trouser pocket, “My house, now.” He takes a further step back and surveys his mother, a woman who has, directly or indirectly, affected him his entire life. “I will never forgive you,” he says finally.

Her mouth twists into something that is not quite a smile, “I know,” she whispers. “But you should know, all I ever did to you was to make you stronger. And look who is the last of my men standing.”

He turns away at this, leaves the parlour, his dropped cigarette still burning a hole in the carpet.


	2. And Your Strength Never Falter

“I will always love you,” she says, expression intent and perhaps a trifle indulgent, “you are my son.” Her eyes- his eyes, his eyes exactly in a face that is like looking in a carnival mirror: thinner in some places and fuller in others but still recognizable as so very nearly his own- her eyes are soft, sad, almost tender. She bends down to press a kiss onto his forehead and he accepts it, because she is his mother.

Her hair, unbound and curling in a way he is sure his hair will curl one day, falls like a dark and shining curtain around them, effectively cutting him off from the rest of the room and making his entire world smell cleanly of mint and juniper. The silken rustle of her dressing gown is a familiar comfort as she pulls him up into her immaculate lap. He barely fits there now and it feels impossible that so short a time ago he could be bundled up and carried around in her arms.

She holds him to her. “What about Regulus?” he asks when she draws back.

There is the betrayal of surprise in the wideness of her eyes and the way she holds her mouth, he sees it and reaches one small hand up to smooth the crease of her brow. “What about him?” she asks.

“Don’t you love him, too?”

She chuckles, takes his hand in hers and holds it palm up so she may inspect the lines writ there. She traces one of them and Sirius sees, for the barest second, something great and sad in her eyes. She closes his fingers and holds his balled fist in her cool hand. When she looks down into his face her expression is clear and a little withdrawn. “I love the both of you,” she says. “As I would love any child of mine.” She pauses to press a kiss to his hand, “But there is a different love that the strong have for the strong, and the strong for the weak.”

She grips his hand tighter in hers, “The love that I have for you is a selfish thing, you will not prosper for it. It is not my love that will make you great, or strong, and there will come one day when you rankle for it,” her voice is matter-of-fact and fluid, as if this is a speech she does not have to think about to deliver. “Indeed,” she continues, tucking an errant strand of hair behind his ear. “There will come one day when you would never believe it of me. That your heart will fill with anger for me and resentment for your brother.” It is because he does not deny it, as his brother would, that she knows she is correct, and she smiles for it, though it brings her no definable pleasure.

He looks at her, thoughtful, “And Regulus?” he asks, after a quiet moment, when he has not found a suitable answer within himself.

“Your brother is too much like your father, darling. They need our love like the stars need the night- it makes them shine the brighter.”

He frowns at this, and appears to think it over, “But what if I don’t want to be the strong one?”

“Life is rarely what we want it to be, Sirius. But if we are strong,” she lifts him from her lap and sets him back down onto the floor. She looks intently at him for a moment before finishing her thought, “If we are strong we can make of it what we will.”

He knows a dismissal when he hears it. He kisses her on the cheek and whispers, “Good night, Mother,” before retreating back to his own bedroom.

“Sweet dreams,” she whispers to the door, when he has been gone for nearly ten minutes.


	3. May Your Wit Never Fail

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The riddle-poem used is not mine, it is classic and Anglo-Saxon and easily found via google search.

The night is cool and quiet. The first promises of spring lays in the growth of green things and the Forbidden Forest smells of flowers and rich earth. As they reach the boundary of the Forest and can no longer be seen by prying eyes in lofty castle windows Sirius throws the Cloak off of himself and of Remus.

He is nearly bouncing in his excitement, “Can you believe we saw these?”

Remus, to whom a tree full of potentially psychedelic golden apples is less of a reason to enter the Forest at night on a waning moon, is more subdued. “ _You_ saw them,” he corrects mildly. Sirius says nothing, derogatory or otherwise, and they continue onwards, Remus alert to the rustling of foliage around them and the small creeping things in the undergrowth.

Sirius is moving decisively, at least, wand lit and leading them further into the Forest until the only thing visible overhead is the black canopy of trees and the things just out of sight make louder, more ominous, noises. Remus clenches his hand tighter around his wand and then, conscientiously, loosens his grip to something more natural.

Time passes strangely in the forest, so that the seconds twist through treacle as they pass but when they reach a clearing with a tree heavy with golden apples at its edge it feels as if they have only just set out. “Sirius,” Remus warns, because nothing is ever this easy.

He is too late though, Sirius leaps over the tiny brook separating them from the tree before his name can even leave Remus’ mouth. There is a sound like a hawk’s cry, like a roaring lion, like the rough grumbling of a hound on the scent and the incongruous lilting laughter of a hyena. A golden light separates itself from the softly luminescent tree and fizzes down to the earth, stretching and lengthening so that when it lands, still several inches off of the ground, it takes a humanoid shape.

And then Remus is leaping over the water himself, because even though the slightly transparent form is that of a tiny girl of indeterminate age, a part of himself that he trusts in such matters is screaming _predator_ and _dominance_ and _Sirius_ just as loud as it can.

He lands close on Sirius’ right, just inches in front of him, knees bent, wand out, and he waits.

The thing before them, more solid now than mere seconds ago, laughs, much too low and much too cold, and if Remus had hackles just then they would be up. She laughs and she leans forward and she appears to survey them, eyes intensely yellow.

“Little wolf,” she says. “Brave as brave, little wolf,” her voice is a symphony of tones, high and low at once. It grates in their ears and yet each pause is painful and rapturous at once. “Foolish wolf,” she says and spreads her arms, stepping out of the light she appeared in, so that they may see her more clearly. Her hair is short and unkempt, neither brown nor blonde nor red, but a strange indeterminate middle colour. She smiles at them, showing teeth that are long and sharp and gleamingly white. “I could rip you to pieces, wolfling, for your presumption.” She indicates Sirius with an almost dismissive jerk of her pointed chin, “Who is it that you defend?”

Sirius takes a step forward, chin up, wand out, and he says his name loudly, determinate, as if it should matter to this creature.

To both of their surprise she laughs gleefully, throwing her head back and ruffling her many skirts, “Little noble son! Would your family weep for you if I kept you as my pet, little noble’s son?”

“No,” Sirius replies, eyes narrowed, wand securely in hand.

“Oooh,” the thing squeals, bending herself in half at the waist, inspecting Sirius more closely. “I met your dam, little boy. Pretty boy,” she coos. “Pretty as pretty. Pretty as the piper that played for the moon, and he stole her heart, he did. Stole her pretty silver heart and gave it to his girl as a pretty-pretty for her neck.” A fierceness overtakes her expression and she bares her tiny, sharp teeth at them, “I could take your heart, pretty little pretty boy. I could take it and give it to the moon and she would love me forever.”

Remus takes a half-step forward, places his free hand on Sirius shoulder, “It would not be yours to give.”

She cackles, her skirts flouncing so that they get a view of the vibrant, sparkling bloomers underneath. “Oh, and you, Moon’s child, what would she give me for you, do you think? A pretty-pretty of my own, do you think? Your heart, do you think? Methinks,” she says, grinning sharply at them once more. “Methinks I could take that for myself. They would make such a lovely pair hanging from my wrist- and I never need tell my lady Moon. A nice pair of lover’s hearts, all for myself.”

“You would have to fight for them,” Sirius says, fingering his wand, a look of careful control on his face.

“True,” she says, a bit of a frown tugging at her brow and her mouth. “True as true, true as the truth the wind sighs.” She pouts and flops down into a tailor’s seat, mid-air, and rocks back and forth. “True as the egg the robin laid- and nobody likes a fighter’s heart. _I_ don’t like a fighter’s heart. They are so tough, and not near so good to eat.”

She lies back now, curling up like a cat, and indeed, a cat’s tail lashes behind her, long and tufted. A lion’s tail. She grins at them with a lion’s predatory intentness in her yellow eyes. “We could trade, pretty pretties. I’m not so particular, either one would do. And your suffering would be so exquisite. So very pretty. I would keep you until you ached for him.” Her eyes flick between the faces before her and to her dismay she finds only stony firmness.

She lets her grin soften, she makes her lips fuller and her eyes bigger and her hair longer and shinier and more golden. When they look at her she shines with a sun’s brilliant radiance. “I could give you your heart’s desire, pretty boys.” She leans closer to Sirius, “A mother’s love, little frightened boy. A mother that loves you so much she would never never _never_ do bad awful horrible things to you. A perfect, pretty, loving mother. Little lost boy. Little lost and frightened boy.”

Sirius expression remains stony. “You’ve met my mother,” he says.

She nods eagerly, “A pretty pretty mother for a pretty pretty son. Hair like the night’s sky and eyes that shone like the moon, your dam had. I wanted her heart so very very much. So very much. I wanted her eyes for jewels,” she says, caressing her long neck. “Her pretty silver pretty eyes.” She pouts again and gives a hard-done-by sigh, “But she had such a silver tongue. Such a pretty silver tongue that she made me let her go.”

“Then you know she is not capable of love.”

Her grin grows cruel once more, “Do you have her tongue, Walburga’s son? Mother’s son? Do you have her cruel, charming, silver tongue?” She draws a long, shining knife from the air and Remus has to consciously still himself not to flinch away from the pure, aching silver of it. “Oh yes, Moon’s child. Little moon wolf, little baby wolf. Perfect silver, perfect pretty shiny silver. I would give you such gorgeous marks, such perfect pretty shiny scars.” She flicks her attention back towards Sirius, “Wouldn’t you let me have him, little lost boy? I would treat him so well.”

“Let us go,” is all he says, cold and tense.

She shows him her pout once more, laying down now on her stomach and kicking her bare feet into the air, knife carving idle circles. Her eyes are calculating. “But I haven’t tempted the wolf yet,” though she says it her eyes do not shift from Sirius. “What does the man-wolf want? The boy-wolf? The baby-wolf? What does the little wolfling want?” Her grin spreads hugely from ear to ear, “Why, to be cured, of course.”

They trade a quick glace before looking warily back at the grinning, floating creature before them, her knife has disappeared, “But-”

“Oh, but it’s secret.” She says in a stage whisper, one finger over her lips. “Secret as secret. Secret as the growth in the acorn. Secret as a garden underground. And he is tempted, the little wolf. The sad little wolf is tempted. He hates hates hates and he rips rips _rips_ and he bites bites _bites_. I would do it, little wolf.” Her smile grows even larger so that they see clearly each of her teeth, “I would only need one thing, little wolf. Only your magic, little moon’s son. Only such a tiny, trifling thing as your magic I would take from you and leave you whole. Leave you whole and unmarked and unharmed. A human man-boy.”

Remus’ jaw aches with the way he is clenching his teeth together. “No,” he spits out, “Never.”

Her laugh is harsh as a crow’s cry. “No? Little monster? My price is too high? But look- look at the lost boy. He is tempted. He would give himself for you, wolfling. Little cub. He would trade his heart and his magic and his everything for you, you needn’t even ask it.”

Remus reaches out with his left hand and takes Sirius’ right, he squeezes it in his own and repeats, “Never.”

Sirius squeezes back, “Let us go.”

She looks in their eyes and at their hands but she knows she has not lost yet. “Oh yes, little young ones. Little wizards. There are three ways to leave my nest- my cage. Attend: My name will release you. My true name will let you walk away from here.” She tuts in sympathy, “But you, the neither of you, know my true name. Such pity.” She holds up a long, oddly jointed finger, “But! Buts and buttons, a favour would release you. A true and favourable kindness. A debt must always be repaid, the scales should always be balanced. Or! Buts and buttons or Ores- a riddle! You could answer my riddle and I would let you go. Safe as safe, secret as secret back away to your pretty little castle.”

“What favour?” Sirius asks, just as Remus says, “What riddle?”

She chuckles, and though it is warm and throaty and full of amusement it does nothing to reassure them. “Any small favour,” she says, caressing her throat once more. “A gift, perhaps.”

“What gift would you accept,” Sirius asks, eyeing her movements suspiciously, “short of dismemberment?”

“I would not take anything you would miss,” she says, as indignant as any good thief caught in the act. “What is your freedom worth?”

Neither have anything they might freely give her, “What is the riddle?” Remus asks again.

She smiles at them, slowly, as if she finds the thing she is about to say beyond mirth, and recites:

 _“I saw a strange creature,  
a bright ship of the air subtly adorned,  
bearing away treasure between her horns,  
fetching it home from a war.  
She wanted to build a bower in the stronghold,  
construct it with cunning if she could do so.  
But a mighty creature appeared over the mountain  
-his face is known to all dwellers of earth;  
He seized her treasure and sent home the wanderer  
against her will; she went westward,  
vowing revenge, hastening forth.  
Dust lifted to heaven; dew fell on the earth,  
Night fled hence; and no one knew  
thereafter where that creature went.” _

There is a thoughtful pause, in which both boys frown at each other and think; neither is the type to let a puzzle get the best of them. “A bright ship of the air,” Remus repeats.

Sirius nods, “Going westward.” There is another long pause and then he smiles suddenly, “Dew fell to the earth-”

“-and night fled hence. It’s the moon,” Remus announces, words weighted with absolute certainty.

“And the sun,” Sirius adds, grinning defiantly at the tree’s guardian.

She frowns at them for a beat before bowing, low and mocking, when she speaks it is with a layer of derision, “Well thought, man-children.” She makes a wide, flourishing gesture toward the opening in the trees they entered through. “You may leave freely.”

Sirius glances past her, towards the softly glowing apples, for a beat and shakes himself, as if to dismiss his disappointment, “Let’s go, Moony. Before she tries to scalp us, or something.”

She chuckles, “Deal won is deal met, I would not cheat.” Her predatory smile does not fade, “Though- perhaps we could strike a new bargain?”

“Oh?” Sirius asks, eyes suspicious, voice careful.

“What would you do for just one apple, star born? What would you do for two?”

“What would you ask from us?”

“A kiss?” she asks, with well feigned innocence. “Not for me,” she clarifies, at their startled looks. She gestures towards Remus, “A love’s kiss. Would you give me one of your love kisses for one of my apples.”

“No,” Sirius says, not even pausing to think about it. “We wouldn’t-”

“Just the one kiss?” Remus asks, cutting Sirius off.

The thing grins at him, “One is all I need.”

Sirius looks at him, aghast, “You would do that?”

Remus appears to consider it, and he nods, “It is what we came here for.”

He grins at Remus, full and brilliant, and, close as they are, he takes a half-step closer. Remus leans forward and Sirius whispers, “I never knew you were such an exhibitionist, Moony.” And they kiss. It is the barest brush of lips against lips but it is hot and bright and the best kind of stomach tingling, even in the dark, even with an impossible creature watching them greedily.

When they separate a ghostly white bubble is floating between them, it flies into the creature’s open palm and solidifies into a perfect bronze pearl, nearly the same circumference as a galleon. She tucks it into a pocket, or perhaps just a fold of her skirts, and selects an apple from the tree above her. She throws it as Sirius and he catches it.

She gives them another of her sharp grins, “Bargain met and paid, children. May your bowels rot and your loins wither,” she finishes, almost perfunctorily. She disappears in a blinding flash of golden light.

“Cheers,” Remus tells the tree, rubbing the afterimages from his eyes.

Sirius grins at him and they both cross the brook, which they now realise runs in an eerily perfect circle around the tiny clearing. They begin their walk back to Hogwarts.

Just before they reach it, still in the shadow of the forest, Sirius offers the apple to Remus. “For the fairest,” Sirius says, at his questioning look. Remus rolls his eyes, but he blushes, too, just as Sirius throws the Cloak about the both of them. They huddle close and take an ambling route back up to the castle.


	4. May Your Actions and Your Reasons Remain Toujours Pur

“The guard at the door tells me this is the third day in a row you have come here and failed to walk past this room,” a familiar voice says behind him. It is not a voice he was expecting, and something heavy and cold sinks in his stomach in reaction to it; he turns and faces Walburga Black. “I am curious,” she elaborates. “Is it love that brings you to my son’s prison, or hatred?”

She is resplendent in black. Her hair, more heavily shot through with grey now then when he last saw her, is braided and pinned into a heavy coronet around her head and Remus cannot help but think about how very fitting this is: the Black Queen in mourning. “The real question,” Remus tells her, voice hoarse, “is what keeps me from seeking out his cell.”

A smile curves her scarlet mouth. “How clear minded of you,” is all she says. A dementor enters the room from the door leading further into the prison and warmth seeps from them; Remus does not think he has enough happiness in him to cast a Patronus.

Walburga removes the necessity. She draws her wand with shaming speed and says clearly, almost dismissively, “ _Expecto Patronum_.” Something large and avian flies from her wand, when it slows to take a turn around them he sees that it is a falcon. There is the surprising un-surprise that comes when he learns any wizard’s patronus, a feeling of rightness in the connection. The falcon continues to circle them, reclaiming the warmth of the room.

Now that the singularity pull of the dementor is gone he summons a memory and casts the charm himself. His wolf lands lightly on the ground and takes a guard position halfway between them and the dementor. He carefully avoids looking at it, childishly hanging on to the belief that if he can not see the six marked differences between his wolf and any other neither will the woman standing next to him.

She is looking at him when he faces her. She says, simply, “What symmetry.” She is too alike and too different from her son for Remus to properly read her. The arch of the eyebrow is right (mocking, suggestive), but the firmness of her mouth and the bright coldness in her eyes throws him off completely. “I never hated you,” she says, suddenly.

“I-” he flounders, not sure of what to say to her.

She narrows her eyes, smiles coldly, “It isn’t the fault of the child that the parents fall. Your mother was a very talented witch, it was a shame when she married outside of the blood.”

“Is,” he corrects. At her look of incomprehension he continues, “My mother _is_ a very talented witch.”

A muscle jumps in her jaw, but she says, “Of course, you’ll forgive me.” It’s the kind of apology he knows to expect from a Black, a expectation of forgiveness without acknowledgement of the misdeed. She continues, “Imagine what a child she would have produced, had her husband been an equally powerful wizard. That would have been a fitting companion for my son.”

“I remember the night we were Sorted,” Remus says, abruptly. There is vindictiveness there, he has many scores to settle with this woman in black silk. For the child he befriended, if not the man he thought he knew.

“Oh?” she asks, and he knows now, from the cautious tilt of her head and the lightness in her voice that she is working hard at not giving anything away.

He had still been an observer, that first night, still a step removed from the three people he would be closest to for the next ten years. But it hurts thinking about this, a week is not enough time, nowhere near enough time. His words come in a rush, a torrent after so many days of silence, “He wore the Hat for nearly five minutes, the entire Hall was silent when it finally called its decision. He was…terrified, I think. Absolutely scared out of his wits. Still shaking when I sat next to him, later. I don’t think he ate at all that night, only stared across the hall.”

She looks eager. There is a startling attentiveness in her eyes that makes Remus realize, in a way, he is giving her a treat. He could tell her a thousand stories of late night mischief and even the dullest, most tedious observations she would gather greedily from him. He knows more about what her son became than she could hope to. “He was trembling with fear over what his mother would do to him, what his family would think, and when your letter came, the next morning,” he shrugs, as if he thinks what he says next will mean nothing to her. “I think that was when he decided he didn’t want to care.”

Her face shuts down, but not quick enough for him to miss the hot flare of anger that breaks the ice of her eyes. This satisfies, though it does not please him.

She tilts her head back, so that though she is nearly a foot shorter than he she can still look down her nose at him; her eyes narrow and then she smiles, a slow calculating smile that stretches wide across her face and leaves her eyes cold. “Do you ever,” she asks, and her voice is curiously distant, “want to burn it down? The city, the people? Scorch the earth to the core, just to build it up again the way it should be?”

He frowns at her, there is not, he feels, much in the way to say to this. “And how should it be?”

She throws her head back and laughs, a deep, unladylike laugh that is reminiscent of her son. “I imagine our opinions on that _would_ differ.”

“So would many.”

True humour hooks her smile and crinkles the lines around her eyes. “That’s the problem, no?” She gestured to the hard stone walls around them, “How many of the men and the women inside of these cells would say they were only trying to make things how they should be?”

There is ice again in her pale eyes and such an air of the predator in her expression that he feels challenged. He sets his jaw and takes a deliberate step forward. The dementor still lurks in the door and the room feels crowded with presence. He takes another step forward, close enough to graze her arm with his fingertips, if he were of a mind. For a moment it is tempting, to brush his fingers across the soft sheen of her perfect silk, but he clamps down on the impulse before it can take root. He cannot, however, keep from asking himself if she would ever wear that particular pair of robes again, knowing he had touched it.

She smiles, as if she knows what he is thinking, and takes a step forward of her own, so that there is but a hand span of distance between them. He can smell the mint of her soap and the juniper of her perfume, even the slightly waxy scent of her lipstick. He studies the intricate pattern her hair follows and the black on black embroidery of her robes, the tiny green-black seed pearls worked into the design and the discrete drops at her ears. This woman, he realises, could go mad and no one would ever know.

She leans even closer, so that her mouth is close to his ear, and whispers, “He would have burnt the world to cinders for you.” She draws back, gives him one last frosty smile, and leaves for the labyrinth of the prison proper. She doesn’t, he notices, even flinch when she passes the dementor.


	5. May the Stars Guide Your Passage

Sirius is not good at saying goodbye. It is, he thinks, a skill that takes practice, and Sirius has never desired to practice anything that gives him that cold, leaden feeling in his stomach. So he doesn’t.

He waits. He waits while his mother and his father leave, and he waits until there are no more noises from Regulus‘ room, and he waits until he hears the door to Kreacher’s cupboard close. He stands at his window and he watches the fog descend on London until Number Twelve Grimmauld Place is silent and shrouded.

He thinks about the way the corners of Remus’ eyes crinkle when he laughs, and he thinks about the way that laugh makes him feel: wistful, and a little sad. It’s a good laugh, a warm laugh, and it’s the sound Sirius would most want to hear right then, if he had the choice. He would trade the glamorous din of London for Remus’ laugh against the warm hush of the common room when it was only them, and they were alone.

He can’t help contrasting it with his mother’s laugh, her rare true laugh: the way her lips tilt up just at the edges and her mouth presses in on itself and her eyes sing gentle chastisement even as her head tips back and a sound more like breathing than laughter escapes from her throat. He knows which sound he likes better, no contest.

She won’t forgive him, but that’s acceptable. He’s used to her not forgiving him. She could have forgiven passion. If he stormed out the door after they had argued she could call it high spirits and be proud that she had a son that was so strong. This, though, this she will understand and this she will censure.

He leaves in the dead of night, when his parents are dancing with society and his childhood home is silent. He takes what he can fit in his trunk and he leaves the rest behind, intensely mindful of what they will find, come morning. He says goodbye to the house he grew up in and he walks out the front door and he doesn’t look back.

He walks for awhile, dragging his trunk behind him. He should throw out his left hand and call the Knight Bus, but he wants to be well away from Grimmauld Place before he does. So he walks, the never quite silent London alive and moving around him, and he tries to pick stars out behind the orange haze of the city’s sky.

When he throws his wand hand out and the bus arrives, huge and violent as always, he’s tired of the city, and he tells the conductor to take him to the Potter’s house.

 

Everyone’s there already, like it’s a party and he’s late-- like they’ve been waiting on him to start. James grins and throws up his arms in triumph and he grabs onto Peter and they dance about the Potter’s living room like madmen, stripping songs of their lyrics and making up nonsense in their place. It makes Remus laugh and suddenly Sirius is so tired that he has to sit down on the couch or drop from exhaustion.

Later, after Mrs. Potter has cleared away the last of the empty cocoa mugs and harried them into bed and Sirius is laying in a pallet on the floor and staring out through the window at the stars, bright and perfect and huge in a sky like rich blue velvet, like the sea, but frozen and quiet and deep and vast enough that Sirius is nothing-- is infinitesimal next to it, he smiles for the first time in weeks. He listens to the soft breathing of his friends, of people who care for him beyond what’s required of family and blood, and he grins out at an ocean of stars.


End file.
